GoodGuide raises $3.73M for ethical shopping

GoodGuide, a site that helps shoppers find healthy, sustainable, and ethical products, has raised $3.73 million in a first round of venture funding.

The concept behind GoodGuide is rather obvious, but it was also tough to pull all the necessary data together. That’s why there are plenty of other sites offering information about how products measure up in a specific area — say, environmental friendliness — but none attempting to aggregate as much data from as many sources covering pretty much any metric a shopper would be interested in. The company rates products using 180 different criteria and also provides overall health, social, and environmental scores.

The San Francisco company was my favorite among the startups I saw at the TechCrunch50 conference in September, and I was even more impressed with GoodGuide’s iPhone application, because it allows you to look up products while you’re in the store. My one disappointment was that the site doesn’t cover a broader range of products — at the time, it focused on personal care and household chemical products. Since then, GoodGuide added a toy guide, and chief executive Dara O’Rourke tells me there are plans to unveil food listings in early February. GoodGuide won the “most likely to make the world a better place” award at this year’s Crunchies.

Private Equity Hub first reported the funding, citing a regulatory funding, and O’Rourke sent me an email confirming the news. The round comes from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and New Enterprise Associates.

Update: If this news sounds a bit familiar, it’s because O’Rourke previously mentioned the funding, but didn’t specify the amount.